Thursday, December 29, 2005

News Summary Applications- 'Socialize and Network with External News'

I have no doubt that in 2006 i will continue to deliver Custom News Summary applications to my small/medium and enterprise global clients. There is a huge business need to improve the workflow around these important editorialized news deliveries that can help organizations build enterprise knowledge.

If my last year's theme around News Summaries was 'to End Carpal Tunnel as we know it in corporate communications and PR', in 2006 i think it will be to enable ‘participatory consumption’ to socialize and network with targeted external news more within the enterprise.

By now I have no doubt you have heard the term ‘Web 2.0’- there is a lot of buzz around this and any blog that is outlining 2005 in review and looking to 2006 is talking about it. Dion Hinchcliffe does a good job of providing a summary of resources about Web 2.0.

So do i see the Web 2.0 as affecting the stuff i work with? Yes. I see Web 2.0 applications as creating a framework that gives people tools that they can use- to express themselves and connect with each other. They take advantage of user-contributed content and see users as producers of intelligence. There is no reason that this shouldn't be happening within the enterprise. I see two-way interactions with external news as next steps for some companies that provide daily/weekly news summaries with external authoritative content and even providing two-way interactions with companies that for example have large sales teams collaborating on client projects and need to see news, financials, etc. as a team. I am already working with some companies that are incorporating them into collaboration applications (like Wikis) that allow users to comment and continue ‘conversations’ around each article/topic.

The exciting stuff is that even in 2005 i started speaking to you all about taking these custom news summaries a couple steps up. For example, in addition to collaboration, I have a handful of companies that are looking to add RSS and blog content to news summary applications to provide a more complete view ( for example a consumer products company that targets young consumers whose ‘hobbies’ are covered in indie websites that editor’s can select articles from).

The core need of ‘pushing’ highly targeted and hand-picked articles will continue because we are far away from having technologies that able to provide highly relevant views that incorporate individual companies’ enterprise knowledge. So let’s use technology to allow users more participation in conversing about external news and how it affects their organization, their competitors and the industries they cover.